Chapter Three

Atlas

This was not good.

For multiple reasons.

Topping that list, though, was because Kingston was going to be fucking crushed that I hadn't called him. From the hospital in Switzerland. On the way to the airport. When I got to the States again. And, of course, when I got home.

We lost our mom early, and Kingston had stepped into the parental role immediately, taking care of all four of us when he was hardly an adult himself.

He always wanted to know what we were up to, if we were alright, when he was going to see us next.

The rest of my siblings made that easy by all settling down in Navesink Bank, putting down roots, getting jobs, getting married, having kids.

I'd been the one who refused to stay in one place long enough for roots to dig down.

I was sure each strand of gray that had started to streak his dark hair was because of me and my inability, or unwillingness, to always tell him what I was up to, where I was, if I was alright.

It was bad enough that I was back in town without having contacted any of them for, hell, three months.

But when he showed up and saw me in this condition?

I was hoping that I could suffer through the worst of this alone and get myself somewhat mobile again before they even knew I was back in town.

It wasn't that I didn't love my family. I did. I just wasn't great at letting people take care of me. Since, well, that just wasn't the kind of life I'd been living.

So, yeah, I was inwardly bracing for King's arrival.

While also having to wrap my head around this new development.

Namely, the woman standing about five feet away from me, still holding a frying pan, and watching me with worried eyes.

She was pretty as fuck.

I noticed that probably even before I'd seen the frying pan, while her dog was still licking my face.

She was average height and weight, but a little more top-heavy, wearing an all-black outfit covered in dog hair. Her shiny dark brown hair was clipped back, but a couple of strands had fallen loose around her square face that was dominated by these deep set, sultry-ass dark brown eyes with a fuckton of lashes around them. Those were the kind of eyes they used to call ‘bedroom eyes.'

As she seemed to get lost in her own thoughts, she gnawed on her pillowy lower lip which made a dimple dig into her cheek.

I couldn't help but wonder if she only had the one, or if she'd been lucky enough to get a set. And what they might look like while smiling.

Christ.

What was wrong with me?

There was no reason to be eye-fucking the woman who looked like I'd just kicked her dog.

That dog, however, seemed completely oblivious to the tension in the silent room as he walked over to his bed big enough for a full-grown man, turned around, then curled up with his head resting on a massive dog bone shaped stuffed toy.

The woman, AJ, she'd called herself, and I didn't say anything as we both waited for Kingston to show up.

It wasn't a long wait, though.

Kingston's SUV came peeling up the driveway and the car door slammed just a second after the engine cut.

There was a pause as he fished out his keys, then opened the front door, since AJ seemed frozen in her spot, the frying pan still lifted.

"AJ, I owe you—" he started, striding in, but then getting a look at me. "Atlas," he exhaled, his face falling. "What the fuck?" he added, moving toward me. "What happened to you?"

"It's no big deal," I rushed to insist, even as pain seemed to ping off of every nerve ending just sitting there.

"No big deal?" he repeated, jaw getting tight. "It looks like you fell off of a cliff."

"You're close. Down a mountain," I corrected, shooting him a smirk, wanting to lighten the mood.

"A mountain?" he repeated. "Right. You were skiing. What happened?"

"Other skiers," I said, shaking my head. "We crashed. I kept crashing and crashing until… I blacked out," I admitted.

"You blacked out?" he asked, his keen gaze moving over me.

"Woke up to my bone sticking out of my leg," I admitted.

"Oh, God," AJ groaned, making us both glance over, finding her looking a little green. Her free hand was even pressed to her mouth.

"Concussion, compound fracture, couple broken fingers, bruised ribs, and strained rotator cuff," I told him. "I was lucky," I added.

"Lucky," King scoffed.

"People die on that slope every year," I said, shrugging off danger the way I always had.

If anyone understood me, it was Kingston.

The big brother who had plucked me off of the ground when I'd built a makeshift ramp in the street, then flown over it on my bike, only to crash. And crash hard.

He was the one who'd been there during my brief stint at amateur street racing, pulling me out of a wrecked car.

He was no stranger to my stunts or the injuries I got because of them.

The difference was here, that in the past, he was always my first call. Even when our ma was still alive, it was him I called out for, or rang on the phone.

This was the first time I'd been injured, especially seriously, without so much as shooting him a text.

And, judging by the look on his face, that hurt.

"Why didn't you call me?" he asked, voice low, the pain clear in his voice.

"I didn't have my phone at first," I said. Which was true. But an admittedly shitty excuse. "And then I was just trying to get home."

"Yeah, and I could have helped with that. I could have at least picked you up at the airport. How did you get home?"

"A ride-share," I admitted.

"How'd you get in the house? Doesn't look like you can walk."

"Had the driver come in and get me the chair," I said, nodding to it, even though I knew each word was just digging my grave deeper, making him feel even worse, given the lengths I'd gone through not to call him.

It wasn't personal.

Not really.

I honestly hadn't been thinking clearly with the pain screaming through every inch of me. All I could think about was getting home and sleeping.

"Christ, Atlas," King said, sighing, his gaze moving away, trying to think of something to say that wasn't going to make this whole thing worse.

Not wanting to talk about it anymore either, I went ahead and changed the subject. "So, who the hell is the woman and the dog?" I asked.

I watched as King's face scrunched up, looking guilty as fuck, as he looked toward AJ.

He let out a deep sigh.

"Yeah, about that," he started.

"You rented out my place without asking me?"

"I called," he told me. He didn't sound accusing, but it felt that way regardless. "Several times. Your place got broken into. Someone must have been watching it, noticed it was empty, and decided to come in. Stole your TV, stereo, and I don't know what else. Nixon, Rush, and I got together to try to figure out what we were going to do about it."

It was there in the silence.

Since we couldn't get in touch with you.

"But then Scotti," he went on, meaning our sister, "told us she put some fliers up to rent the place out."

"And you didn't think to tell her to take them down?" I asked, shaking my head.

"The place was sitting empty fifty-odd weeks a year," King said. "It's not just about it being empty and prime for burglaries. It's the other shit. Not knowing if the heat is coming on to keep the pipes from freezing, to suck the water out of the basement after a heavy rain, it's… all the shit that comes with homeownership, Atlas.

"And we're all busier now than we used to be, so we can't just drop over all the time like we used to. This made the most sense.

"Though," he said, turning to AJ, "I really should have mentioned to you that the house didn't belong to me," he said.

"I probably should have suspected something was up," AJ said, finally placing the frying pan down. "The rent is unreasonably cheap. For a house. With a fenced yard."

"It wasn't about the money," Kingston assured her. "I really just wanted someone here to keep an eye on things."

To be fair, he was right.

I'd been a careless homeowner.

I didn't even know the basement took water.

Maybe a part of me wanted to blame them for this, for making me get this house in the first place. But at the end of the day, I had made the decision myself. I could have rented a storage unit, and told King and the others to just shove all my shit I sent to their places in there.

But I'd bought the house.

Because maybe over the years, my family's lectures about having a "home base" and a "place to land" had started to sink in, whether I wanted to admit that or not.

I did like knowing that when I came into Navesink Bank, I didn't have to sleep on someone's couch. Especially these days, when everyone was reproducing, and sleeping on the couch was dangerous.

I'd woken up covered in makeup with nail polish three times and smattered with stickers twice. And once… in permanent marker. The guilty party had told me that they'd drawn "cherries" on my face. But, damn if they didn't look like balls. A bunch of balls.

My nieces and nephews might have been cute as fuck, but no one wanted to spend their first waking moments using cold cream to remove makeup, or plucking stickers off of their brows and lashes, and they damn sure didn't want to have to try to remove permanent marker balls before they even had their coffee.

So, yeah, I did like having my own place to crash at, sleeping off my jet lag in peace, then grabbing a massive coffee before heading over to see everyone.

He was also right about me being irresponsible about it. Leaving the work to him and my brothers and sisters-in-law. I couldn't blame them for trying to find an easy solution.

"I get that," I told Kingston. "A little heads-up would have been nice," I added.

"It wasn't something I wanted to text or email to you and hope you eventually saw it," King said. "But I should have tried harder to get in touch with you."

I wasn't sure if he meant for it to be hanging there in the air between us, or if I was just projecting my own worries.

And the phone rings both ways.

He wouldn't be wrong if he said that, either.

I'd been even more out of touch than usual over the past year or two. Especially as the money started to roll in from one of my channels, allowing me more freedom to set off in any direction I wanted.

Back in the day, I would have to crash in Navesink Bank for a while, taking jobs doing private security at Kingston's company to save up to head out again.

I didn't mean for relative success to make me selfish, but now that I was faced with my brother's sad eyes, yeah, I had to admit that it was something I'd undeniably become.

"It is what it is. I'm not mad about it," I added, but shot my eyes over toward AJ. Who seemed like she was seconds away from a fucking panic attack.

"AJ…" Kingston started in that calm, fatherly voice of his that brought me right back to my teens.

"Really, I should have known better," she said, talking to herself. "I mean, who gets to rent a house without paperwork or first, last, and security? Especially with a dog," she rambled. "Excuse me," she said as her voice got thick and her eyes got watery.

Then she turned and rushed down the hallway, the bathroom door closing with a loud click that had her dog waking up with a start.

"Heya, Samson," King said as the Golden Retriever-mix came walking over to him after the world's longest stretch. "Sorry we upset your mom," he added, finding a spot behind his ear that had his leg thunking against the floor rapidly. "He's a good dog. Got about a braincell and a half to rub together, but he doesn't do any kind of damage around here."

"I don't care about the dog either," I said, shrugging. "But she's all torn up about this," I said.

"She's a nice kid," Kingston said, older than all of us, so he called all of us ‘kids.'

"How long has she been living here?" I asked, my gaze moving around.

I'd noticed the blanket and the coffee cup that had been unfamiliar to me when I first came in. But I'd been too beat and in pain to really think about it. I probably assumed it was from someone in the family.

Now that I looked around, though, I saw a ton of shit around that didn't belong to me.

Soft, off-white curtains on the window. The dog bed and toys. A collection of hair ties next to the TV. A lamp in the dark corner of the room. A big glass candle sitting on the ledge of the cutout between the living room and kitchen.

"Six months," King said, rocking on his heels. "And I know it's not your problem, but I really don't think she can afford to live anywhere else right now," he said. "I charge her enough to pay the bills, that's it."

And if she already didn't have much to her name, asking her to find another place that would demand first, last, and security was borderline cruel.

Especially when I was only here as I recovered.

"Maybe we can figure something out," I said, hearing the sound of AJ blowing her nose from the bathroom. "It's not like I need to be here for long."

"What did the doctor say?" King asked, gaze going to my leg.

"The leg is the worst," I said, sighing down at the cast, but the exhale made my ribs scream. "Months, they said. Possibly even months in the damn cast. Won't know ‘till I follow up with an orthopedic doctor. Ribs will be a couple weeks. Rotator cuff could be… something that bothers me on and off for a long time. Fingers are nothing. The herniated disc could be annoying, but likely won't put me down or anything."

"You didn't mention your neck," Kingston said, tone chiding.

"Give me a break here, man," I said, shooting him a small smile. "My entire fucking body feels like a bruise. I'm not thinking straight."

"Didn't they give you anything?" he asked.

"Enough to get me back to the States, yeah. But I gotta follow up with someone else now."

"I'll have Scotti ask if any of the Mallicks have a pill or two to spare. They're always hurting something," he added.

It was the nature of their jobs, after all, as loan shark enforcers.

Our sister, Scotti, had married into the Mallick family, making them all of our extended family as well. And when you needed something, that crew either had it themselves, or knew someone who did.

"Wouldn't refuse a pain pill," I admitted as he shot off a text and I tried to sit up straighter, only to fall back with a string of curses.

"Is it so fucking hard to ask for a little help?" King asked, moving toward me, and reaching for the forearm of my good arm, pulling slowly until I was against the cushions, my ribs pulsing in pain as I awkwardly set my cast on the coffee table.

"This thing feels like it weighs five-hundred-fucking pounds," I said, gesturing toward it.

"Looks like it," he agreed as his phone buzzed. "Scotti is with Shane. He says he can drop a half-used bottle by. And a recommendation for an ortho he's used."

That saved me from having to do any research myself.

"Good," I said, sucking in as deep a breath as my ribs would allow, and letting it back out just as slowly. "I feel like I can barely fucking move," I griped.

"Because you're probably still supposed to be laid up in a hospital bed," Kingston said, shaking his head at me. "Always were a stubbon ass."

That was fair.

No matter how my mother or he tried, they couldn't keep me down. Not when I was sick or hurt. Which usually ended up with me making myself a lot worse, and being down for longer than I originally would have needed to be.

"So… this AJ thing…" Kingston said. "What about if you came to stay with me and Savvy?" he suggested. "Or if not us, Nixon and Reagan? Scotti and Mark. Or Rush and Katie. Hell, if you don't want to be around kids, go stay with Helen and Charlie Mallick," he suggested.

Those were all options.

Not so much my family with kids. Because kids were forgetful. And the idea of one of them ramming into my leg or slamming into my side made me cringe.

But Charlie and Helen were an option.

Just… not the one I wanted.

"I'm staying here," I said.

"Atlas, come on," King said, sighing. "You need someone to keep an eye on you. And, again, it's not your problem, but AJ needs a place to live."

"So, she can live here," I said.

"With you?" he asked, dubious.

"Yeah. I mean, it's gonna be up to her if she's willing to stay," I said. "But… I mean, I want to be in my own place. And it wouldn't be a bad thing to have someone around if I need a hand with something."

To that, King nodded.

"Well, I guess all we can do is ask her," he said, moving into the hallway. "Hey, AJ, can you come back out here when you have a second?" he called. "We have a possible arrangement to talk to you about."